I Am Chris Farley

A documentary on the comedian Chris Farley's life with interviews with fellow comedians and friends like David Spade, Christina Applegate, Mike Myers, Tom Arnold and Dan Aykroyd and others.

It also has Chris siblings, most notably Kevin Farley in it to provide stories of what Chris was like growing up.

Although it entertains and occasionally gets emotional when you see a hardended cynic like David Spade become emotional and having a hard time speaking it does feel like a very sugar-coated version of Chris' life.

It doesn't really speak much of Chris' hardships and why he became an addict and any real bad things that he did (which I imagine he did do as we all do) and it pretty much paints him out as a saint clown with self esteem issues.

Now I'm not saying that he wasn't a lovely guy, I'm sure he was, but there is a constant sense of "they're holding something back to save the memory of Chris Farley".

It's also very simple in it's structure, it has a couple people talk about Chris as a child to Chris getting into acting and Chris on the set etc etc, no fancy cuts or effects, more like a memoir collection than a full on documentary where you get to know the man up close and personal.

But still, worth the watch for sure, especially if you're a Chris Farley fan.

Chris Farley was one of those gifted people we lost too soon. I feel honored to have known this during my lifetime as I watched him on Saturday Night Live as a kid and laughed out loud with everything he did.

The documentary goes in depth about this shinning star that burned out to fast. Taking his funniest moments, some we know like the stuff he did on Saturday night live, and some only a few got to see from his time at Second City. It's a Similar format to a documentary about another comedian gone to soon, Bernie Mac called never Scared.

I am Chris Farley goes in depth about what made Chris Farley funny, (his upbringing as a child, his father, his likability) and goes into detail about his funniest moments, like the sketch were he competes with Patrick Swazye for a spot as a dancer at chip and dales. We get an entire recollection of that scene, how it came to be and what made it funny.

It's a story that needed to be told about one of the funniest men on this planet. Anyone who laughed out loud at Matt Foley motivational speaker, will be touched by this doc (so that's everyone)

"I Am Chris Farley" is a documentary about the late comedian. It takes archival footage and current interviews from family and other comedians to tell the tail of how a very talented young man lost his ongoing battle with drugs, alcohol, and fame.

Starting out as early as a child, Farley was always considered the class clown. He loved entertaining people and his sole purpose seemed to be just to make people happy. That's really kinda' sweet in itself. Most people could give a damn whether you're happy or not, but his sweetness went above and beyond. Even after he became a "star," he could still be found entertaining sick children, talking to homeless people, and just being an all-round nice person.

What troubled me most was how the majority of people--both family and friends--always wanted to remain comfortably dumb about his addictions, and these addictions did not manifest themselves later in his life. It seemed he had been dealing with an obsession with alcohol from his early years. He drank to excess MANY times, asking one of his friends (upon opening a liquor closet) "don't you just want to drink every last drop that's in here?" Many comedians who were interviewed admitted they knew what he was doing, but very few- -if any--really tried to get him help.

I had to re-think and re-think my review. It was extremely hard for me to review a biography on someone I really didn't care for that much. I did not care for his type of comedy because I've never been one for slapstick. I also did not care for most of his cronies: David Spade and Adam Sandler, in particular. Watching this bio, however, helped me understand just a little better where Chris Farley came from. He was never intentionally mean to anyone and only tried to make people laugh. The bio was well done.

This movie is unrated for language and brief nudity.

7 out of 10 may seem like a good rating for I Am Chris Farley, and on the whole this is a documentary worth watching, primarily for those who have seen Farley's work back in the 90's (I want to see more of the perspective of someone who isn't a fan, or was too young to see the impact at the time). And for myself the work of this man has resonance from a specific time; as an adolescent, Farley came at just the right time in my life via his work on SNL and movies like Tommy Boy and Coneheads, and I even found as an overweight kid that he was kind of an odd role model.

Here was a guy acting like a silly fool on TV and in movies, but in the roles he was committed completely, without any equivocation, while also having a pure, kind spirit about how he related to other actors and characters: a man-child in a way that wasn't stupid in an obnoxious way (a danger with comedian stars today). Among the sort of BIG comedic stars of his time he went even BIGGER than someone like Belushi (maybe slightly less, uh, nuanced if that's possible as comparison), and with a drive all his own. His death was a shattering moment in my life, though I wonder what would've happened had I grown up more with him around - but for a 13 year old, he was just about perfect.

This documentary looks at his life from start to end, from his childhood and early years gaining his footing as someone who just liked to perform for people on stage (from small clubs to Second City), to SNL and stardom. There are plenty of talking-heads to keep it all moving, plus photos and selected clips from when he was on stage at things like the small club in Milwaukee where he got more focused as a performer, and it's his family that sheds light on a man who was loaded for bear with passion for being silly and making people laugh (sometimes to borderline dangerous results - an anecdote about taking out his penis in a high school typing class is very funny and could only work with Farley and the context of the place).

There might have been a slight quality to some of this first half, and I think it's simply because the directors are making something for TV; this was shot for the Spike TV channel, and the filmmakers use light, bouncy (but very generic) music to move parts of it along, and the same type of generic music over sadder/darker moments when they pop up (mostly near the end of the movie). I also wish that the filmmakers, for all of the clips from SNL (of course) and Tommy Boy and Black Sheep, got other clips were featured to see his different roles (Wayne's World, Coneheads, Airheads, the final performances in Almost Heroes or Dirty Work), or even the audio for certain clips from his very early stage work. But most of all I wish the documentary were longer, and that the filmmakers went more in depth about the dark side of his life; it's not that it isn't touched on, and it's seen how he slipped off into despairing situations in addiction, but it's not given equal weight, and his final year is mostly skimmed over.

And yet the clips that are featured are wonderful, and the anecdotes from certain people like Bob Odenkirk (you can tell Farley was so important a person, nevermind talent, to him), Lorne Michaels, and cast from SNL like Myers and Sandler and Spade make for shaping up Farley as this genuinely good person who was just genuinely uncontrollable as a comic talent and (unfortunately) as an addict. I found myself laughing, big belly laughs I mean, for scenes from SNL that I've seen many times. Something about Farley was so genuine as a performer, there was no real BS about him, and he would go for a joke even if it wasn't there (the skit on the show where he's in the beard at the restaurant) which just shows his total tenacity. And yet it's also revelatory to how he was a solid Christian man in spirit. What's most fascinating about I Am Chris Farley is seeing a man who's own love of excess as an actor and as a man was his own undoing. I wish there was more detail.

Moving from beginning to end. I grew up watching SNL and Farley's films, and this documentary truly moved me. Other reviewers criticisms of this film seem to mainly be that his addictions and death did not get the time it deserves is silly to me and misses the point entirely. Just because it is a documentary, does not mean that it needs to be half positive and half the negatives to balance things out. This was made as a love letter to the man that touched so many of our lives in his short time on this earth and nothing more. It is said best towards the end of the film, that Chris was always hard on himself and never really saw what we all saw in him. This film seemingly is trying to say to Chris today, you WERE that amazing, and genuine, and hilarious, and here is how WE all saw you since you could never see it yourself. To add more about his death and dark moments would take away from this primary goal, and turn it into more of a tragedy than the celebration it was meant as. Great work, great documentary, and a great comedian lost too soon.